Kh Mahrama
BAP005 JADIS2220.021
2006 Field season report:
The site is in two main sections, one large rectangular area to the south-west, and the main area of walling and vaulting to the NE.
North East Area
A Bedouin family currently camp on the northern section of the site, and some areas within the site have been cleared for tents and animal pens. Many rooms on the site have been robbed out, but not recently. The spoil from this robbing is probably confined to the south and south-east of the main area. Both the Wadi Ziqlab and Wadi Yabbis surveys sampled this site. A small pile of dumped, washed pottery was found on the south side of the main site, probably returned by the Wadi Yabbis team.
It appears from wall lines that the latest walls are Mamluke or later, although several are built on earlier walls. The layout of the village is confused and many of the long rooms are quite narrow. The amount of rock tumble suggests that most buildings were constructed entirely of stone, and many were two storeyed.Most pottery appears to be glazed Islamic, Mamluke Geometric Painted and other post-Abbasid wares. However, there are useful quantities of Late Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad pottery, and surprising amounts of Chalcolithic.The main site is ringed by natural caves, mostly small. Some have been modified into Roman or Byzantine burial chambers, or cisterns.
Rock Cut Burial Chamber
5m x 5m squares were laid out to sample across the south-western part of the site. The middle part was inaccessible due to Bedouin dogs and had been previously used for camping so that the surface was covered with animal dung. It was not possible to sample under the oak trees as the composted leaves were too deep.
5 x 5 m scrape
Some 1m x 1m soundings were placed in areas thought to still preserve stratigraphy, but in two of these rock tumble was reached before ancient deposits. Another 1m x 1m sounding appeared to be placed in robber spoil, but the fourth may have been sampling stratified deposits. This would be an excellent site for an excavation-based project to examine the post-Abbasid Islamic period in northern Jordan.
2008 Field season report:
The site was revisited by the BAP 2008 team between the 13th and 15th December 2008. The objective of this revisit was to excavate soundings to a depth greater than that reached in the previous season in order to get stratified Roman/Byzantine period pottery. This had not been possible in the previous season because the 1x1 metre soundings could not remove or work around the Mamluk structure rubble.
Test pit during excavation